students graduated from the fire academy this tuesday. it is the largest group of legacy graduates, ever, and we thank them for their service to this great city of new york. thank you, guys. that's "the story." we will see you tomorrow. ♪ ♪ >> tucker: good evening and welcome to "tucker carlson tonight." one of the most bewilderrerring moments how quickly moves. the "new york times" hit piece on brett kavanaugh. brand new accusation of sexual misconduct but then later had to admit that it was all a sham. when did that happen? feels like a year ago. actually, no, it was just last week. that is the trump era news cycle four. scandals that used to go on for months now seem to end in hours. nothing illustrates that better than this bizarre ukraine story that we are all living through. a week ago no one even heard of it. last night we are on the brink of impeachment because

of it and now it seems to be over already. just to bring you back and remind you what just happened. the same angry news anchors who brought you stormy daniels and the russia hoax now want you to know big orange's days in the white house were finally over. why? because trump, they said, threatened to withhold military aid to ukraine. essential military tied ukraine for some reason. withhold it unless they did something bad to joe biden and his family. basically it was an extortion plot against ukraine. and that's a crime, the news anchored shouted. a crime, trump was finished. well, this morning they turned out to be wrong. actual evidence emerged and it contradicted what they told us yesterday. the administration released a transcript of the president's phone call with the ukrainian head of state and it says none of the things the news anchors claimed it would show. read it for yourself. don't trust us. it's right online.

try to find the extortion in there. there isn't any. trump never even mentions military aid yes, but he asked a foreign government to investigate an american citizen and that's immoral. okay. was it immoral when three democratic senators wrote a letter to ukraine just last year demanding investigations into trump? no answer on that question really. we will tell you if we hear about. instead now they are telling us that the transcript of the phone call can't be real. it must be doctored. watch chuck schumer and adam schiff spin their conspiracy theory last night. >> do you trust the white house enough to take that transcript and believe that that is an actual representation of what transpired? >> well, you know, i think sadly it's the case as you describe that we cannot trust the administration with respect to anything that it produces. >> simply to release the transcript is not going to come close to ending the need of the american public

and the congress to see what actually happened. >> tucker: so, again, that was last night before the transcript was publicly available. now that it is publicly available for adam schiff's conspiracy alleged brain has lurched into a different direction. now he is telling us that the transcript, the one that he has already denounced as fake is, in fact, real. but it doesn't show what it should show, which is to say it doesn't show the president doing any of the things that supposedly justify impeachment. why? well, adam schiff explains, because the president, like a navajo code talker is speaking in secret code. >> this is how a mafia boss talks. what have you done for us? we have done so much for you. but there is not much reciprocity. i have a favor i want to ask you. what is that favor? of course the favor is to investigate his political rival, a classic mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader.

>> tucker: you know, we are not psychiatrists here but honestly adam schiff is a nut case. it's true. it's hard to believe he is in congress. poor people of anaheim or wherever he is from. southern california, the valley somewhere. it's hard to believe he is actually in congress. he is actually a committee chairman, believe it or not, too bad the 25th amendment doesn't apply to members of congress. to be fair, most democrats are nowhere as near as crazy as adam schiff, not even the same ball park. they are just very cynical, extremely cynical. more cynical than you have ever thought of being. for example, watch congressman al green who is not stupid or crazy explain what's actually driving impeachment. watch this. >> are you concerned that impeachment talk may actually help the president's re-election? >> i'm concerned that if we don't impeach this president he will get reelected. >> tucker: i'm concerned if we don't impeach him he will get reelected. i'm concerned that democracy could happen. we have got to stop that. it's about power.

duh. you knew that. that's what it is always about, power. nobody pushing for impeachment actually cares about secret deals with foreign leaders. oh, please. much less justice or the truth. again, these are the most cynical people in the united states of america. what they care about and you knew this already was winning the 2020 presidential election. that's all they care about. getting their mitts on the levers of power and exercising power for its own sake. that's what drives them. that's why they get up in the morning. democratic leaders have decided that impeaching trump essential if they are going to win next year. so they are staking everything on this bizarre flimsy scandal that the rest of us can barely even understand. will it work? probably not. personal attacks on trump were effective, if calling him a racist or a trader actually worked, then hillary clinton would be running for re-election right about now. that's not going to work. it's never worked. if you want to beat trump,

make a case on the issues. he won on the issues. make a counter case. the geniuses can't figure that out. in the end the loser here in this impeachment nonsense is likely to be joe biden. biden, you will recall, the frontrunner, supposedly. he is supposed to be the safe choice. the guy who is going to energize the obama coalition and win back the white house and yet now democrats have in effect demanded that we spend the next six months talking about biden and his son's alleged corruption. because that's at the core of this ukraine story. if we are talking about ukraine and impeachment, we are talking about joe biden's corruption, alleged corruption. that can't help his campaign for president. in fact, it's likely to tank it. it looks like sabotage, really. they must have gamed this up. they must know. is it sabotage? honestly, we don't know. we are not in the room. maybe it is. or, maybe democrats have just become so obsessed with destroying donald trump that

they are destroying themselves accidentally. kim strassel is, of course, a member of the "wall street journal" editorial board. one. smartest people at that newspaper. she joining us tonight. so, kim, this is not really central but i can't help but ask you joe biden would seem to be the big loser here. how does this help joe biden? >> yeah, well, have you just put your finger on the question that those of us who study politics have been really mystified by this week. we have watched the democrats for almost three years now run through a complete litany of things that they have wanted to try to impeach donald trump on. everything, russia hoax, obstruction of justice, stormy daniels, taxes, financials. none of it has stuck. at least in each of those they could keep it focused or claim to keep it focused on trump's behavior. instead, they have now pulled the trigger on the one issue out there that implicates the leader of their -- frontrunner of their own nomination process and is likely to do the most

damage to moderate democrats because the flimsiness of these charges. >> tucker: yeah. i think that's exactly right. and, by the way, you know, i think impeachment really ought to be reserved for, you know, extreme violations of the law because you are short circuiting democracy but, you know, i would support impeachment of this or any other president if one of those violations came to light. i would. i think most people would. but this is so far from that. it's so weird and just -- there is nothing to it. so you really -- i'm not a conspiracy nut, but have you got to think that maybe hurting biden is the point. do you think it could be? >> well, i mean, i don't necessarily think it's that. i think it's mostly driven by extreme hatred for this president. and also timing. look, the pressure had been building up for nancy pelosi to act. they had what they thought might be a good scandal on their hands. and so they pulled the trigger. i think they moved too soon. they looked -- it's embarrassing now given that the transcript has come out.

but i think you also make a good point that there are plenty of democrats, especially the radical left, and those are the ones who most dislike this president who would be perfectly fine if this took joe biden out of the race. and cleared the field for a more progressive nominee. he has got the support of certain quarters of the party, but those are not -- part of the party that has got most of the power and the attention at the moment. >> tucker: if you are looking for a scandal, trump campaigned against the carried interest loophole. so richest liberals in america are paying half the taxes you and i are paying. that's still in place. why doesn't someone try to impeach over that? do you know what i mean? why doesn't this look like a real scandal? >> i mean, look, i think the reality is here, what we are seeing is that, you know, democrats are casting about -- this is what the problem is you just put your

finger on with impeachment. americans expect impeachment to be used in a serious and sober fashion. look, let's be honest, congress has the right to impeach the president for laughing the wrong way. they can impeach for anything they want. the american people expect more than that. i think what we are seeing now as they roll through these litany of things and from one to the other and the other and nothing -- they are looking for a crime, right? they want something. and people then begin to think that this is not -- this is not about accountability or the constitution that we have heard so much about. this is about redoing the last election. and that is not something most americans agree with. >> tucker: no. it's -- and i'm not saying that as some kind of blind trump partisan. i think that's a threat to our constitutional system. and i think it's bad. i know you agree with that kim, great to see you tonight. thank you for explaining all of that well, nancy pelosi and jerry nadler are in charge of impeachment this week. but they had pretty different opinions on the

subject just not that long ago, a few decades ago. one democrat currently in congress is about to tell us why he disagree disagrees with impeachment today but first trace gallagher has a look back at pelosi and nadler's view on this suddenly very relevant topic. hey, trace. >> hey, tucker. what makes this so rich is that house speaker nancy pelosi says that no one is above the law. most legal analysts even on the liberal media outlets acknowledge it would be very difficult to make a case that president trump broke the law. but, back in 1998, president clinton actually did violate the law and when house republicans voted to impeach, pelosi said it was based solely on hatred. watch. >> today the republican majority is not judging the president with fairness but impeaching him with a vengeance. and the investigation of the president fundamental principles which americans hold dear, privacy, fairness, checks and balances have been seriously

violated. and, why? because we are here -- we are here today because the republicans in the house are paralyzed with hatred of president clinton and until the republicans free themselves of this hatred, our country will suffer. >> also back in 1998, pelosi went on to say that president clinton was not impeached for one single thing but for all of the g.o.p. grievances against him. and speaking of selective political memory, in '98 new york congressman jerry nadler said impeachment was, quote: bad for the country. watch. >> impeachment of a president is an undoing of a national election. for the reasons we all feel so angry about what they are doing is that they are ripping from us -- they are ripping our votes. they are telling us our votes don't count. >> so for the record in 1998, nadler said impeachment was bad for the country.

in 2019 he says it vindicates the constitution. tucker. >> tucker: amazing. that just made my night. trace gallagher, thank you for that well the other day democrats appeared to be divided on the question of impeaching the president. this week they appear to be nearly unanimous. a few holdouts are warning that an impeachment push is a mistake, bad for the country and possibly counter productive politically. one of them is congressman jeff van drew represents new jersey. thanks for coming on. >> it's my pleasure to be with you. >> tucker: you are a democrat. i will say a conservative democrat but you are a democrat. and the easy thing would be to go along with your party's leadership on this question but you are not. why? >> i have never been good at that to begin with. just very briefly, people will say, you know, your job is to be a good democrat or a good republican and i keep emphasizing your responsibility and job is to be a good american. so i go what i believe in my heart is right and in my brain. and it seems to me at this

point in time we really do want to accomplish some goals, infrastructure needs to be dealt with. healthcare needs to be dealt with prescription drugs need to be dealt with. you know, election, you know, elections need to be dealt with as far as making sure that they are secure. i can give you a whole long list, tucker. the point is i really believe the more that we delve into this the more time we spend on it especially in a macrolevel the more we are not going to be able to spend time on these other issues that are important. and it's not because we can't walk and chew gum at the same time. somebody brought that up. we can walk and chew gum. the problem is when we are this divided and this split and two political parties and all going on people are not going to work together. of the president is not going to be signing bills. the senate bills are not going to be going through the house. the house bills aren't going to be going through the senate. at the end of the day, i am afraid that all we are going to have a failed impeachment. folks need to understand, i mean maybe there are those

that want to punish the president or make a point and i understand that. but the bottom line is he is still going to be the president of the united states and the bottom line is he is still going to be the candidate for the republican party. so why don't we let the people do the impeachment by voting in the electoral process the way that we usually do. >> tucker: you mean democracy? >> absolutely. i love it. >> tucker: not a popular concept in washington. i guess the political question, of course i agree with everything you said and i commend you for caring about those issues because i think they are bipartisan fundamentally. but everything you said is pretty obvious. i mean, no offense to either one of us but, you know, anyone can figure it out including the smart people who run your party. so, they know they are not going to get a conviction. this isn't going to work. there is no chance of it working, so why are they doing it? >> i'm not sure i can answer that i think part of it is they believe that the president should be held accountable for some things that he has done. you know, by all accounts, nobody ever pretended that he is perfect or there

aren't some issues. but, you know, i always use the example even during the clinton administration and when that impeachment -- by the way, i was also not for that. and we saw that it didn't really bear any fruit, wasted a lot of time and money. >> tucker: no, it didn't. >> he had some serious issues there. he even lost his ability to practice law. he was disbarred. but with all of that happening, it still wasn't nearly enough for impeachment to go through. here's what folks have to understand. impeachment is a very, very serious, serious move to take by any political party or political entity. you know, we have to realize that when you impeach somebody, it has to be for really strong reasons because you are also, you know, removing the power of the people. you are disenfranchising their vote. whether we like it or not. you are disenfranchising their vote. it has to be serious to do it. my worries are getting stuff done.

i really want to do good things and i want to do it in a bipartisan way. i really want to see the country move forward. i really know that, you know, this -- abroad i think that people could look at this and think that our country is disorganize and in turmoil that we are split apart. i think it will split people in society apart folks literally in the united states of america are going to get angrier at each other. i don't believe it is going to bring people together. that's what we need to do. then we have the election. the other issue by the way is midterm elections going on now and then we are rolling right into the fall elections for president and congress, et cetera. and i don't know that we need to have all of this going on at the same time. >> tucker: i agree with that again, as you just pointed out voters get to render a judgment in a little over a year. >> they sure do. they sure do. >> tucker: congressman, thanks for joining us tonight. i appreciate it? >> it was great to be here. thank you. >> tucker: is asking a foreign leader to investigate corruption a

crime? some of our angriest most partisan news an anchors are claiming of course if trump did it, it must be a crime. in legal world experts are divided. in fact there has been a debate about it right here on this channel. we will sort through it after the break. ♪ ♪ by the strolle♪s

[ growl ] good boy. hey. hey. you must be steven's phone.

know who's on your network and control who shouldn't be with xfinity xfi. simple. easy. awesome. >> tucker: so this ukraine story seemed to come out of nowhere and there is totally no consensus on what major parts of it mean. for example legal experts appear to be even split tonight whether the president's phone call with the ukrainian president was illegal. so we wanted to get to the bottom of that obviously.

so last night we asked joe digenova on the show he is a attorney and we put that question to hi to he said no the is no evidence at all. that statement caused quite a firestorm and so we asked joe digenova to come back tonight for update. joe, thanks so much tonight for coming on. i want for our viewers who are not familiar with what exactly happened to know. here is a quick update yesterday judge andrew napolitano a legal analyst at fox and a very nice guy went on one of our daytime shows and declared that the president's phone call with the head of ukraine was a crime. here's what he said. >> it is a crime for the president to solicit aid for his campaign from a foreign government. so. >> that would be -- that to which the president has admitted is in and of itself a crime? >> yes. >> tucker: so that definitely got our attention, of course, it's a crime. and so i ask you because you

prosecuted a lot of crimes and for viewers that didn't see it, here's what you said. >> well, i think judge napolitano is a fool and i think what he said today is foolish. no, it is not a crime. let me underscore emphatically that nothing that the president said on that call or what we think he said on that call constitutes a crime and even if he had said you are not going to get the money, it would not be a crime. tuck, apparently our daytime host who hosted judge napolitano was watching last night and was outraged by what you said and quite ironically called you partisan. here's what he said. >> shepard: a partisan guest who supports president trump was asked about judge napolitano's legal assessment. and when he was asked he said unchallenged judge napolitano is a fool. attacking our colleague who is here to offer legal assessments on our air in our work home is repugnant.

>> tucker: repugnant. not clear if that was you or me but someone is repugnant and here is finally last soundbite here is how judge napolitano responded. >> a lot of legal authority and i join it on the other side. and the other side basically says anything that helps the campaign, whether it's cash or emails or smearing your opponent is a thing of value. >> shepard: and therefore, requesting it is a crime? >> yes. >> tucker: now, unlike maybe some dayside holy spirits i'm not very partisan and it was a sincere question. is it a crime or not? given everything that's happened in the last 24 hours. i want to throw it to you again. was it a crime or not? >> absolutely not. now, let me sort of educate judge napolitano. the president of the united states is the executive branch under article 2. he is the chief law enforcement officer of the united states. he can ask anyone, a citizen, a foreign leader, a

question. he can make a suggestion about an investigation because he runs them. and by the way, in the latest set 2 with the whistleblower, the office of legal counsel has said that requesting information from a foreign government is not a thing of value. it is not a foreign contribution. i really -- i must say this. i have been an u.s. attorney and independent counsel and investigative counsel on capitol hill in the house and the senate. judge napolitano has never been a u.s. attorney. he has never been a federal prosecutor. he has never conducted a federal grand jury. i have done all of those things. i -- if he wants to have an opinion, that's fine. i am not a paid fox contributor. i am a guest of fox network. i come on when they ask me. so and i am told, please, whatever you do, tell the truth, don't make things up. don't cover -- so, what i say i believe and of course

as a matter of law i know what i'm talking about in the law i try to be truthful. i was very truthful last night. >> tucker: that's kind of the crux of it for me. i'm not a lawyer at all. that's why i solicited your opinion. i also know that some things are subjective and people of goodwill have differing views. and so that's why it doesn't seem honest to me when a host, any host on any channel, including this one, pretends that the answer is obvious. there is ironclad consensus about what the answer is when there, in fact, isn't, when it's a subjective question. that's not news, is it? that's opinion. >> no. no, it isn't at all. you were asking me my legal opinion and i gave it. judge napolitano gave his legal opinion and he is entitled to it. but i can tell you -- i can tell you as a former united states attorney i'm right. >> tucker: interesting. why do we find our selves in a situation where people

aren't willing to admit that their passions are guiding their news coverage? wouldn't it be better if we just said out loud you know this is what i think? for example you will never hear me criticize rachel maddow. i never agree with anything she says. straightforward, it's her opinion. why wouldn't it be better if we were all that transparent about what's driving our shows? >> tucker, i couldn't agree with you more. that's why when i come on fox, i say what i believe and what i know. i never make things up. i never try to cover up for people. i am blatantly obvious about the fact that i support the president of the united states. i believe he has been framed. i believe he is an innocent man. i will defend him to the death. judge napolitano just doesn't like the president of the united states. he is entitled to that he is entitled to feel that way. he is a disappointed office seeker. he didn't get the seat on

the supreme court that he desperately wanted and he has been mad about it ever since. he showed it yesterday and he showed it so many times over the last year it's pretty embarrassing actually for me. you know, i love the guy. god bless him. >> tucker: i do too. we invited him on tonight by the way. it makes people cynical when you dress up news coverage, when you dress up partisanship as news coverage and pretend that your angry political opinions are news, you know, people tune out. >> they do. >> tucker: they know dishonesty when they see it. joe, thank you for being here tonight. good to see you. >> thank you. >> tucker: pretty amazing. democratic lawmakers claim the white house easily fabricates the transcripts of calls with foreign leaders. is that true? an expert in the process of presidential phone call. there is such a person and we know her. she joins us after the break to investigate. ♪ ♪

>> well, the ongoing

meltdown over ukraine is shining a light on a practice that's pretty common in washington but almost never discussed presidential phone call. how many people are listening to these calls authorized and unauthorized? and how are transcripts assembled? who puts them together? who is allowed to read them? gillian turner actually knows the answer to these questions. she has direct experience. she serves on the national security council sill for both the george w. bush and barack obama administrations and she joins us tonight. hey, gillian. >> hello, tucker. so as someone who read and edited probably literally hundreds of these types of transcripts at the white house during the bush and obama administrations, i can tell you this as close to a verbatim readout of this call as exists. now critics of the president are slamming the transcripts the white house released they are calling it incomplete and fake and even branding it on twitter as #not a transcript. the sources who actually know how presidential phone calls work say this document reflects a very standard

procedure will. every administration for decades now has documented calls with foreign leaders. they also tell fox news their confidence is accurate so it's essentially a compilation of what two situation room officers wrote down while listening in on the call in realtime. this is what they are trained to do. the document you are looking at now would declassified tuesday by the president as you can see there it's marked it also indicates this call itself took place on july 25th. one source familiar with the white house situation room staff today claimed the two transcribers who listened in on this call are likely cia employees detailed to the white house from the agency on an assignment. after the watergate scandal, tucker, the white house kind of stopped doing audio recordings of the president's calls so this document is as close to the ground truth as you and i are really ever going to get. >> tucker: that's interesting. in other words, it would take a pretty vast

conspiracy to subvert this document, i mean, to put out a false one. >> yeah. i mean it goes through multiple layers of proofing, of editing. several people review it to ensure the classification is correct. so it's not like one person could tamper with it. >> tucker: it's not like corey lewandowski banged it out on his ipad. >> it would take a whole lot of people that aren't even political appointees in this administration. it would take career people doing this doctoring it on behalf of the president which doesn't make any sense. >> tucker: yeah. it's really hard to imagine that gillian turner, so nice to have you explain that to us and to do so from direct personal experience. thanks a lot. >> gillian: great to see you. >> tucker: great to see you. congressman devin nunes represents the state of california the pride of valley. he is ranking member of the house intelligence committee. he joins us tonight. thanks for coming on. >> thank you. >> tucker: i don't want to

put new an awkward situation but you serve on this committee with adam schiff. and and so, again, if this is awkward for you, i hope you will just say so. >> i'm used to being on your show. it's always awkward with you. >> tucker: good. let me make it worse. adam schiff has said a couple of things in the last 24 hours that give, i think, socialer people pause and raise concerns about his mental fitness. he suggests that the president was, for example, doctoring this transcript and then subsequently suggested that he was speaking in some sort of secret code. what do you make of that? >> well, like many things that adam schiff and the democrats have been saying over the last three years. it's been nearly three years of this russia hoax. now it's transformed into the ukrainian hoax, they say a lot of things that always have one thing in common. they end up being false. and they always -- they are very clever because they use the things -- you can see the doors right there, right? it says restricted. so they will come out of those doors and they will say well, we have seen some

really secret stuff. we can't tell you about it, but just trust us. this is really going to be the time that we're going to catch president trump with his hands in the cookie jar. >> tucker: that's lying, isn't it? >> well, one person's lie is another man's, you know, just trying to get to the truth is what they would always say. >> tucker: we're going to see more of it tomorrow. tomorrow we have the director of national intelligence, the acting director coming in to testify 9:00 a.m. everybody's going to be watching. there is going to be hundreds of media people there every station is going to be covering it, live -- look, this is not what the intelligence committee should be doing. if we want to take a whistle whistleblower seriously, we should be doing it behind closed doors so that we actually can talk classified information to try to determine whether or not there's actual real -- if there is really something to this complaint or not.

>> tucker: i mean, have you spoken -- i mean, you have been in the house for a while. you were committee chairman. you know everybody. are democrats fully on board, i mean, off the record are they saying to you, boy, we are going to impeach this guy and get a conviction in the senate? do they believe this is going to work? >> that's a very good question. the way i would say it is about like this. you have 30 or 40 or so, maybe a few more that have been around a while that know what they are doing is wrong. but they are being challenged by the left. now, what you also have though is you have people who have lied so much, the old saying if you tell a lie enough eventually it becomes the truth. you have so many that have done that it's like every day they are pouring gasoline on themselves. they are pouring gasoline on the american people. they continue to light these fires out there. why? one for donors. they are igniting their base to have donors give them money. >> tucker: right. >> that's how they have gotten themselves into this impeachment trap which is totally irresponsible. >> tucker: they really don't

like that when you take power away from them i have noticed. >> no, they don't. >> tucker: no they really don't. thanks for coming. in good to see you. >> thank you, tucker. >> tucker: a young man in iowa raised a million dollars to rais to help sick children. as a result phony journalists decided to ruin his life over tweets he sent in high school. nauseating story. we have details on it next. ♪ ♪ (aurelia) i did have hearing aids from another company,

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♪ >> tucker: well a football fan's heart-warming charitable gesture could soon become something more important and we are praying for this. it could become a turning point in the 2019 cancel culture plague. it is wrecking our country: that's not an overstatement by the way. it all started on saturday

when iowa state cyclone's fan carson king appeared in the background of espn's college game day show. king held up a sign as a joke he asked for donations to fund his busch lite supply. the moment went viral online and soon king was receiving thousands of actual dollars in actual donations. pretty cool. but rather than take the money for himself. he did something awesome, actually. king announced that he would donate the money to a local children's hospital, and he did. eventually he raised more than a million bucks. anheuser-busch watched and announced to be making a matching donation. he became a minor celebrity and even appeared here on "fox & friends." >> you raised how much total money? >> so right now with matched contributions we are over $822,000. they came in from just people watching college game day. we shared some social media posts with my intentions which were to donate everything but the cost to cover one case of busch light to the university of iowa family children's hospital. people caught wind of that.

they started donating and then bush and venmo caught wind of it and match whatever contributions we make. children's hospitals do so much for everyone around the country. obviously, you know, anything you can do to help the kids you have to do. >> tucker: pretty great story but maybe he shouldn't have gone on fox news because that clearly caught the attention of the journalist stick community. reporter at the des moines register decided to basically wreck this kid's life and so he did. he went digging for an excuse to destroy king. the des moines register found that excuse in two tweets that king made seven years ago. tweeted seven years ago when he was 16 years old in high school. the tweets contain racially offensive humor. the kind that edgy teenagers traffic the world over. not defending it but that's how they talk sometimes. it didn't matter. the des moines register decided that this kid had to be destroyed so they dispatched a reporter called aaron calvin and he published a profile of king

that highlighted the two ancient tweets. then he went to anheuser-busch totality on king. well immediately the beer company announced it would drop all association with carson king. and by the way, the offensive tweets were shows taken from the television show to btosh 0. anheuser-busch is a major advertiser. in other words, this huge company is happy to crush you for quoting products they fund the creation of. if that doesn't make your head spin, then nothing will. in a bizarre statement posted to twitter meanwhile the des moines register's executive editor carroll hunter said the paper's behavior was part of we are quoting a routine background check. is this some guy raising money for a children's hospital in a viral video needed a background check from a failing souped newspaper staffed by failing losers which are the people

who work there, by the way. this is common now. reporters trolling a person's entire life history for excuses to destroy him. that is standard practice. the paper said that it debated extensively whether to publish the tweets. right. also they decided they had no choice but to do it because journalism. so they destroyed an ordinary person for doing a good deed. it wasn't journalism. it was an act of cruelty and casual malice. one of many by the way. but we figure we would highlight this one because it is completely over the top. by the way, irony of ironies, the very reporter who tried to destroy carson king's life turns out to have his own offensive tweeting history. now he is under investigation by his own paper who never conducted a background check. the whole thing. of course it's a richly deserved irony mutually assured cancellation. really this shouldn't be happening at all. we don't root for anybody's

cancellation for somebody he said in high school. nobody should have reputation wrecked for dumb jokes made a decade or whatever ago. cancel culture is a natural plague and it the only people it helps are bullies who use powerful platforms to defame and crush those they dislike often with the help of major multinational corporations. thankfully some people are starting to realize that. more than 100,000 have signed a petition calling for the des moines register to apologize to carson king and hopefully they will immediately. you should drop your subscription to that paper immediately if they don't for real. hopefully it will be the last time you need a petition like this. davis is editor-at-large at red state. we are happy to have her tonight. kira, thanks a lot for coming on. >> hi, tucker. thanks for having me. >> tucker: you know, evan in journalism for 28 years or something at this point. i'm not proud to say that. i don't see how checking this kid's tweets from high school and then running them in a profile is journalism

but maybe i'm missing something. you tell me. >> no. it was pure insanity. i never would have -- that never would have made it to publication if it had been one of my writers. i have been doing this job for almost a decade. ticker, think about how many stories the des moines register does every day on people. are we to believe that they do thorough background checks into the cleats of tweetf every person they report on every single day? what a bizarre and pathetic excuse. i think carol hunter should be fired and shouldn't work in this industry again. they should be utterly ashamed of what they have done. there is nothing journalistic about this. >> tucker: what it really is it's not political most of the time it's an exercise in power. an abuse of power. these are people who work in a failing industry for low wages and they have no respect because everyone hates them and justifiably. and so the one way they can feel powerful is by hurting other people, and so they

do. >> but i do think it must have something to do with politics because, obviously, i mean eric alvin, that reporter, had his own terrible tweets in his timeline but nobody went and investigating those until he turned up as a hypocrite and a bunch of people on the right went and dug into his timeline. i disagree, tucker. i do think that it's got to be politically motivated in some way because it seems like people who identify as liberal left don't ever get to be the victims of this. or people -- people who identify as liberal and are doing this counter culture stuff don't even think it matters in their timelines which tells me they are exercising a type of privilege, liberal privilege. >> tucker: i think you are right. i think when politics becomes your religion, you know, there are no limits. and by the way to all those that thought we would have a better country when christianity died? this is the country we got. tier care remarks great to see you tonight. >> thanks, tucker.

>> tucker: the press went all in on the latest impeachment story. why do they keep making the same mistakes over and over and again. we explore that question not for the first time after the break. ♪

♪ >> tucker: the press rally to support democrats after they launch yesterday's impeachment push, sort of impeachment push, whatever they are doing. pretending to impeach. the press hardly backed out today when the transcription of the entire scandal -- the said. >> this is worse than i think people expected. >> this kind of conversation when a godfather would say i want you to do something. >> we don't know if we can trust any document produced by the white house. it's terrible to say that but

true. >> tucker: the media are very confident that wanting corruption investigated is a high crime worthy of impeachment. but they are even more confident about something else. they are confident there was absolutely nothing wrong, nothing at all wrong with joe biden's ne'er-do-well son getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by ukrainian energy company to sit on a board he wasn't qualified to sit on. that's totally fine. >> there is no evidence of joe biden doing anything wrong. >> this is something that's been looked into and they haven't found anything to look into. american media, we have looked into it. "the new york times" has looked into it. if what hunter biden did was wrong then there are a lot of people with the last name of trump that have some answering to do about their foreign work. >> tucker: chuck todd wants you to know that what hunter biden did was totally fine and you should just shut up.

you shut up. "the new york times" looked into it and they can be trusted. they got a pulitzer for covering the russian collusion, the spying that trump did for vladimir putin. chuck todd does not want you to show any concern about what hunter biden did for the ukrainian energy company, just so you know, how a car. >> chuck todd who used to work for a guy who lied about his combat record in vietnam. jake tapper dissolves a very concerned about doctored documents. he worked for chelsea clinton's mother-in-law who is married to a guy who went to prison for bank fraud which is also known as doctoring documents. this is ridiculous. they told us it was a smoking gun. now we have to read between the lines. so they're telling us basically

what the transcript says, don't worry about it. trump meant something he didn't say but on the other hand, you have the videotape of biden saying something but he really didn't mean it. if you notice, tucker, they are always saying the same thing. first you have adam schiff saying it's a mob shakedown. then you have blumenthal tweeting that it's a gangster shakedown and then hillary clinton's favorite journalist andrea mitchell saying it reminds me of the godfather. is there an echo in here? how about stephanopoulos? george stephanopoulos breaks and on the press conferences says to an unrepentant president. maybe because he didn't do anything. then he said he's also somewhat untruthful. talk about a guy who should know something about untruthful presidents. bill clinton he worked for, lost his law license, was impeached, lied under oath. this is really ridiculous.

how about ilhan omar and hillary clinton telling us no one is above the law? >> tucker: [laughs] >> i thought their whole career was saying they were above the law. >> tucker: we are out of time. we could go on. great to see it. back tomorrow at 8:00 p.m. sean hannity right now. >> sean: great show. how he is a great radio host. knows everything. great guest. welcome to hannity. the democratic party, medium mob want to impeach or duly elected president of the united states over what is a big, huge pile of nothing. this is even 1,001 times weaker than the russia witch hunt, the ukrainian witch hunt. after days and days and days nonstop psychotic hysteria, a phone call between president trump and the president of ukraine, called but nobody knew the contents of, even without knowing the contents of the raging democrats announced impeachment anyway with no knowledge.